I figure this can be a place to offer up and ask for time estimates for when long games get good.
[Please place suggestions in brackets and bold like this.]
My situation is I’m about an hour and a half into Xenoblade Chronicles and I’m not really feeling it and was wondering when this thing is supposed to turn a corner or if I should quit immediately. When it gets good seems to be a sorely missing feature on howlongtobeat.com and I couldn’t find any website that’s taken up the task.
Figured we could start an informal resource, because I trust you folks’ opinions more than a random quote from someone in a GameFAQs post. If this gains any traction I can try and maintain a master list. Just give an estimate to the closest 30 minute increment of how long it takes a game to get good or the plot point or location that it gets good. Immediately is an acceptable answer as well. Differing estimates are welcome. I’m going to arbitrarily say a long game is 12+ hours typical play time, I’m not married to the number though.
Hang on until you are 26! Oh wait you mean, Xenoblade.
Where are you in the story?
You can share spoilers like this.
[spoiler]likethis[/spoiler]
Not a Xenoblade spoiler:
So, it’s more like Xenobleh! for you, amarite?
I think vibing with the "we are living on a giant mech god colossi thingy” setting is pretty important early on, but the game does indeed start slow to get you acquainted with the cast and better propel their motivations later on. If you’re a bit bored by the fetch quests at the beginning and preoccupied with the pedestrian first dungeon, definitely keep going.
I’d say you will know for sure if Xenoblade is for you when you are gallivanting in a place called the Gaur Plains.
A longplay I am checking on Youtube seems to indicate you’ll reach it around three hours in, if you strictly follow the main story. The location is so emblematic that it is used in the Smash Bros. stage for Shulk, and it’s what many people consider to be the “The real Xenoblade starts here.” moment of the game. If by then you’re still not really feeling it!, this game is probably not for you.
Many people discovered the series with XB2, which has a very different vibe (more classic shōnen anime), so you might also give up on XB1 and check that one instead. It does come with the bad sides of shōnen anime tropes…
Personally, I think the first Xenoblade (esp. Definitive Edition) is an all-time classic and still the best in the series, with a wonderful sense of scope, interesting traversal, memorable locations and cool twists until the very end.
I can’t really stomach taking a $60 dice roll on a game if I’m not meshing with another game in the series.
I just talked to everyone in town and meandered around for a good bit and now I’m in the first dungeon of the game. The setting and scope of things is sorta neat to me, but the characters and combat feel uninteresting to me so far.
OK! Then I would definitely recommend you trust the game for now. The story will start picking up pretty soon.
Combat gets progressively better as you unlock these very MMO-inspired cooldown abilities. Once you get three (proper) characters in the party, you will finally be able to perform the combo chains that make the meat of the battle system.
i liked the idea even if in practice it was just a way to tell you if a single player game was long and good “value-for-money.” it’d be interesting to see a site like HLTB or backloggd chart user data in this way.
If you’re like me, the game does not get good. I played through the whole thing out of stubbornness, but it’s really such a bland RPG, with the fetchiest of side quests, a boring cast, and a repetitive battle system with damage sponge enemies.
This is a tricky question. I’ve come to hold the opinion that even when a game’s introduction is agreed to be slower—easy to say this about a lot of RPGs, but for example Persona 4 is a common example, or the Ocarina-influenced Zeldas—that even in that case, feeling bored or like it’s resisting enjoyment can be meaningful: pay attention to that feeling and don’t keep playing just because other people tell you to.
One problem is many games in the past 15 years or so have this lengthy tutorial woven into the opening hours of the game. The question sometimes isn’t “When does it get good?” but “When does it really begin?” Red Dead Redemption II takes about three hours to take the reins off so to speak. On one hand I encourage giving a game time to really declare its intentions to the player, but on the other hand no game inherently deserves that chance: you make your own decision about why you’re coming to this piece of software, and what you expect to gain from it. If Xenoblade fails to grab you in the first 20 mintues with its art direction, music, character designs, cutscenes, town environment, etc., don’t worry too much about putting it down. There’s only so much time to play video games!
That being said: Final Fantasy XIII does not “get good” as soon as you get to Gran Pulse. If you aren’t enjoying it before then, you won’t enjoy it afterward.
Glad you posted this - that game has been on my to-do list for a long time and when I felt closer to getting it, I saw the Switch release announced so made me wonder about that too. Like you I’m happy to invest in the time at the start if it’s worthwhile in the long run, and as always the IC community has come with their knowledge and given me a new perspective on it. I am more inclined to give it a play now than ever before.
I miss MMO gaming, and the logic behind the cooldowns and their effect on the flow of a battle, so that’s a big sales point I didn’t know about!
Half-Life 2 Persona 4 IMO Suikoden Ys: The Oath in Felghana
Not immediately, but it gets there
Street Fighter 6: World Tour Mode - 2.5 hours, after all the tutorials (I already know how to play this game, let me play it!) Red Dead Redemption II - 3 hours, after all the opening cutscenes and missions Shin Megami Tensei IV - 0.5 hours, after you’ve struggled through the opening battles (whose success is determined nearly at random) and built a team of demons Final Fantasy XIV - 80 hours… haha jk but there is a huge amount of tutorial info at the beginning which takes maybe 5 hours to unspool; if you don’t enjoy the laid back pace and overexplanatory writing from the jump, let it go
Never, GIVE UP
Persona 5
???
Neo The World Ends With You - good right away, then gets bad for several hours, then good again
You bringing up Persons 4 makes me realise that there could be a thread made about openers that really grab people. Seeing that body in the telephone for the first time when it came out was a huge shock. Almost a ‘Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic’ moment.
I went ahead and made a table with everything people have told me so far. I didn’t stop to think that plot points and locations can be much more natural markers, so there are times and locations both. I put in cut-off point for when people have said at what you should be decided on a game.
I listed people’s names next to the estimates so you can go with whoever you trust more in cases of multiple estimates.
As an uncontroversial opinion I put FFVI as immediately enjoyable, and probably controversially I listed Dragon Quest VII as 17 hours.
Persona 5 - good immediately (love the casino snippet followed by the interrogation); the handholds come off about 4 hours in, after which it’s even better
Persona 4 - also good immediately, and maybe slightly faster to let down the handholds
Persona 3 - this one I don’t have fun with until 3 or so hours in when one gets access to Tartarus
Ys: Ark of Napishtim - about 15 minutes, or almost immediately
Xenoblade Chronicles - yeah, 3-5 hours, depending on how quickly you get through the initial sequence of events
Dragon Quest VII - immediate for me (I love the slow start) but I agree that Alltrades Abbey is an important step, as is the first time you go to an island
Xenoblade Chronicles X - about 2 hours, IIRC
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 5 hours, or by the time you’re mostly through Mor Ardain
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 2-3 hours
Dragon Quest VIII - 1-2 hours (or as long as it takes to control a mouse)
trying to think of something but the only examples coming to mind are when games stop being good and/or sharp momentary dips in quality in otherwise good games. for example, there’s a really stupid shopping mall sequence in yakuza 8 (that some might say it never recovers from…)
Never played xenoblade chronicles. Only the second entry. I started that one three times now and sometimes got in as far as 5 hours and I still couldn’t tell when it gets good. That game’s start is sloooooow.
Xenoblade Chronicles started clicking for me around Satori Marsh, maybe around 10-12 hours in. I think the trick is to not worry about the colony building sidequests until you get fairly deep into the game. Once you meet Melia and start having interactions with Alvis, it gets really interesting. But it did drag on a bit at the very end of the game.
Xenoblade 2 clicked for me around the point where you watch a play that goes over the lore, that’s when I got locked in. Maybe around 20 hours in?
I did play these games during the spring of 2020, and I had a lot of patience for them. I ended up putting 60-70 hours in both so I definitely got a lot out of it. It was a nice break from real-world events so there is something oddly nostalgic about it. I think I might have been more favorable to these games than I would be in 2024. (I gave up on got into Xenoblade 3 early on, but still feel drawn back to it when I play other Nintendo games.)
Forspoken gets good about 4 hours in. The opening is very linear and objectives don’t really appear so it doesn’t pay off to mess around in the open world. The dialogue people take umbrage with is pretty front-loaded. Once you get through that initial setup and leave for Raenost Castle - the side objectives become available and the game takes you through fun open world dungeons and there’s some actually nice lore and character relationships.
That’s right, never give up on Persona 5 because it’s a consistently good time from beginning to end :)
